Oppo is Taking its AR Hardware to AWE 2022

We do love a good hardware announcement here at gmw3 and Oppo hasn’t disappointed as it prepares for the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in California next week. The company has announced that for the first time North American visitors will be able to demo its augmented reality (AR) hardware.

Oppo Air Glass
Oppo Air Glass. Image credit: Oppo

Oppo will be demoing three of its products at AWE 2022, the Oppo Air Glass, AR Glass 2021 and its ColorOS Ray Tracing 3D Wallpaper. All of these have previously been revealed, the earliest of which was the Oppo AR Glass 2021, the company’s second AR glasses concept, introduced at OPPO INNO Day 2020. Air Glass appeared at INNO Day 2021 whilst the 3D Wallpaper was introduced during this year’s Game Developer Conference (GDC).

The Oppo Air Glass is very reminiscent of more enterprise-focused AR devices like Google Glass, providing users with time or situational information. With a sleek design, the Air Glass has a magnetic component so it can attach to users’ glasses whilst housing Oppo’s own Spark Micro Projector, a Micro LED and a bespoke diffraction optical waveguide display.

It’ll have all the input methods you’d expect from an XR device such as this, using touch, voice, head movement and hand motions to scroll through and select information. While Oppo has been developing AR technology since 2014 the Oppo Air Glass will be the company’s first commercially available XR product. An actual release date has yet to be confirmed.

Oppo AR Glass 2021
Oppo AR Glass 2021. Image credit: Oppo

“With the explosion of digital information, the ways in which we interact and exchange information between the physical and digital worlds are constantly evolving,” said Yi Xu, Director of XR Technology at OPPO in a statement. “Our belief that AR can be used to create a new digital world entirely based on the real world has been the driving force behind our investment and R&D in AR technologies, including the development of fundamental technology, applications, user interfaces and ecosystems.”

Or for something slightly different there’s always the ColorOS Ray Tracing 3D Wallpaper. Nope, this isn’t some hi-tech home wallpaper, this is a ray tracing application for smartphones. It allows Oppo phone users to interact with their wallpapers using hand gestures, so they can rotate, tap and wave whilst enjoying more vivid and life-like wallpapers.

For further coverage from AWE 2022, keep reading gmw3.